How To Deal With Emotions Through Theater

Theater is an activity that has many therapeutic benefits. In fact, it is a discipline that allows you to work with, let go of, and express emotions. Let’s take a look at how to deal with emotions through theater.

It can be very reassuring for people to express the darker aspects of human experiences. Acting contributes with many opportunities to explore our inner shadows and secrets. Interpretation of characters allows people to transform on a personal level.

Likewise, the most important aspect of expressing ourselves creatively is that  it allows us to bring out all the dark aspects that live within us. 

By playing roles that are tyrannical, selfish, and destructive,  you can release the negative energy trapped inside.  If you do not let it out, it can affect your mental and mental health.

Theater helps children develop

Theater can, to a large extent, benefit the way individuals develop. It is an opportunity for young people to learn to deal with emotions. They can experiment with their relationship to their body, to others, with beauty and even ideologies, values ​​and problems.

Young people also find common emotions and everyday situations in theater. However, they express them with a bit more artistic dimension. That means they live in a rewarding experience as they build their relationship with the world.

Among other things,  theater offers young people knowledge about their own body, emotions and reactions. It also teaches them skills in listening, cooperation, empathy and healthy relationships, as well as how to increase self-esteem.

In itself,  theater creates a place where people can create different situations. Furthermore, they can recreate and interpret roles and use them for a purpose.

More and more schools are incorporating theater into their curriculum. This is because artistic education is very important for human development. The idea of ​​having theater tuition allows students to work with this. Furthermore, it is an excellent way for them to connect with the world of emotions.

Exercises to deal with emotions through theater

If you want to deal with emotions through theater, you should know that there are some simple exercises. We will explain a few, below:

1. Express emotions

To perform the first exercise,  you need a large cube that has six faces. Each face represents an emotion you want to work with. For example, you can include sadness, admiration, fear, etc.

Students should sit in a circle and each participant has to wait for it to be their turn. When you roll the dice, express the feeling it lands on. Next, explain when you have experienced this feeling in the past.

2. Learn to deal with emotions through theater: Role play

The second exercise is, without a doubt, the funniest of the three. You need several participants. They  need to maintain a conversation by using different roles and emotions. 

Before you get started, distribute some papers with different emotions on each of them. Next, at the end of the exercise, you  must guess the feeling each participant has played. 

3. Guess the feeling

In conclusion, we have a very simple exercise to learn to deal with emotions through theater. As the first activity, the children have to sit in a circle next to each other. Each participant represents an emotion and everyone else has to guess it. Once they have guessed it, one moves on to the next participant.

We should mention that  theater is a great tool for working with children’s emotional education. In fact, it also works well with the elderly. Everyone can benefit from the skills learned on stage.

Acting enables people to control emotions in a positive way and  learn important skills for personal and social development. Making theater improves people’s self-esteem, empathy, responsibility, cooperation and self-confidence. They learn to get along well with others, as well as to learn more about themselves.